1965 Award Winners

Biographies below were included in the program for the year listed here and were current as of that time.

Rebecca Bloodworth

High School Teacher

USD 500 Kansas City Kansas

Miss Rebecca L. Bloodworth, daughter of Mrs. Mary B. Bloodworth and the late Reverend D. W. Bloodworth, was born in Bethpage, Tennessee, the third oldest of four children. She spent her early life in Chattanooga, where she was graduated from high school. She then attended the Atlanta University preparatory school for one year, later receiving her A. B. from the same institution. She received her M.A. in English from Columbia University; and has done further graduate work in the language arts at the University of Chicago, University of Minnesota, New York University, University of Missouri at Kansas City, and University of Kansas. Before coming to Kansas City, Miss Bloodworth taught for three years at Florida A. & M. College in Tallahassee, Florida.

For the past thirty-eight years Miss Bloodworth has been a teacher of English in the Kansas City, Kansas, high schools, where, says her superintendent, she "has performed an outstanding service as a teacher and leader of young people." Miss Bloodworth has been a member of the Kansas State Teachers Association since she came to Kansas, is a life member of the National Education Association, and a member of several associations-local, state, and national-directly related to her teaching field. Aside from her professional interests, she is a member of the Y. W. C. A., the N.A.A.C.P., the Alpha Kappa Alpha social sorority, the First Baptist Church, and the Insurance Board.

Bryce H. Gleckler

Social Science Teacher

Dodge City Junior College

Bryce H. Gleckler, son of a Methodist minister, moved so often during his youth that he could scarcely call any town his home. He was graduated from the Hutchinson High School in 1926 and Southwestern College in 1930, where he received the A. B. degree. Later he did additional work at If Pr.t Hays Kansas State College, the University of Colorado, and Denver University. He secured his A. M. in 1962 by attending Colorado State College during summer terms.

Mr. Gleckler began his teaching career in the Dodge City High School in 1930. For many years now he has been a member of the Dodge City Junior College faculty, where he teaches social science and where he, for one year, was acting dean.

Mr. Gleckler is currently a vice president of the Kansas State Teachers Association. Earlier he served this organization as a delegate to the Zone Schools, the Representative Assemblies, and the Delegate Assemblies. For two years he was a member of the KSTA Tenure Committee and for another two years he was a member of the KST A Board of Directors. Aside from his professional interests, he is a member of the Methodist Church, where he sings in the choir, serves on the church board, and teaches a Sunday school class. For four years he was a member of the Junior Red Cross Board and for many years he has been a Red Cross Safety Chairman. Though active in professional, civic, and religious organizations he has served his community first and last as a classroom teacher. The classroom is his first love and his students, their parents, and his colleagues all proclaim him a Master Teacher.

Mabel Lacey

English Teacher

Gorham Rural High School

USD 407 Russell County

Mabel Lacey was born on a farm near Gorham in 1893; and now seventy-two years later she is teaching English in the Gorham Rural High School. In between these two dates are forty-three years of teaching, all within a 25-mile radius of her farm home where she still lives. By attending summer schools, extension classes, and doing correspondence work, she completed the requirements for entering college, mostly at Fort Hays Kansas State College where she received her B. S. degree in 1935. In 1940 she received a Master's degree from Colorado State College of Education. Later, she attended the University of Minnesota and Emory University. After having taught in and around Russell for a quarter of a century, she became a member of the English Department at Fort Hays in 1946, wi-,ere she taught until she reached the retirement age set by the Kansas State Board of Regents. During World War II she taught soldiers at Fort Hays, for seven years she taught developmental reading to more than a thousand students, and at one time she taught English to the foreign students.

Miss Lacey is a member of many organizations-professional, social, and honorary. In 1936 she began attending the National Council of Teachers of English meetings, she thinks she has been a member of the KSTA for the past forty-five years, and knows she has been a member of the NEA since 1945.

During much of her teaching she has commuted from her farm, and thirty-five years passed before she was forced to miss school because of health or weather.

Hazel Lee Simmons

Teacher

Cordley Grade School

USD 497 Lawrence

During the past twenty-eight of her forty-two years of teaching, Hazel Lee Simmons has taught in the Gordley Grade School in Lawrence, a school named in the honor of a famous Kansas pioneer minister but also one where, under Miss Simmons, several well-known Kansans began their rise to fame. Among her students have been Ralph Houck, manager of the New York Yankees; Jerry Brownlee, City Manager of Fort Worth; Dolph Simons, Jr., publisher of the Lawrence Daily Journal World; and Hobert F. Ellsworth, Kansas representative to Congress. Miss Simmons, following her graduation from Ottawa High School, taught a rural school for three years before entering the University of Kansas where she worked her way and obtained the A. B. degree in 1926. After one year of teaching in the Harper High School, she began teaching in the Lawrence system where she has taught continuously, except for time off for additional study, until the present. She holds a Master's degree from Teachers College, Columbia University, and has done additional work at the University of California at both Los Angeles and Berkeley, the University of Colorado, and Michigan State University.

Miss Simmons is a member of numerous professional organizations on the local, state and national level, but her activities in tl1ese groups have been strongly accented by her interest in elementary education. She has served on an advisory committee and as a discussion leader at the National Elementary Principals Association meeting, as president of the State Elementary Principals Association, and as a discussion leader of the Department of Elementary School .Principals of the National Education Association. She is a member of Delta Kappa Gamma, Altrusa, the Knife and Fork Club, American Association of University Women, and the Presbyterian Church.

Floyd C. Smith

Principal

Iola High School

USD 257 Iola

Floyd C. Smith, a native Kansan, was born on a farm near Bronson and attended an elementary school south of Bronson. He graduated from Fort Scott High School in 1919. In 1924 he entered Kansas State College of Pittsburg, where he was graduated in 1927 with a B. S. degree. While attending college, he received a letter in basketball. Upon completion of his B. S. degree, he accepted a position with the Iola schools, teaching industrial arts and coaching basketball. During summers he completed work for a Master of Science degree from Kansas State College of Pittsburg, which he obtained in 1933. In 1937 he became principal of the Iola High School, a position he has held for the past twenty-eight years. In 1947, he became dean of Iola Junior College and has held the dual role of principal-dean since then.

Mr. Smith has served his community, his state, and his nation in a multitude of professional ways. For the past thirty-eight years he has been a member of the Iola City Teachers Association, the Kansas State Teachers Association, and the National Education Association. For the past twenty-eight years he has been a member of the Kansas Association of Secondary School Principals and the National Association of Secondary School Principals. He is the only man to have held the presidency of KASSP for two years. For six years he served on the state committee of the North Central Association and was, also, a chairman of a committee at its annual meeting. For seven years he was a member of the Board of Control of the Kansas State High School Activities Association, serving as the Board's president for three years. He is also a member of the Kansas Advisory Council on Teacher Education. His chief interests apart from professional organizations are the Methodist Church, the Rotary Club, the Masonic Lodge, and the Iola Chamber of Commerce.

Dorothy L. Vaughn

Science Teacher

USD 461 Neodesha

Dorothy L. Vaughn, a native of Ohio, has spent most of her life in Kansas. After graduating from the Neodesha High School, she attended the University of Kansas for five years where she majored in Botany and where, for the last three of these years, she had an assistantship in the Botany Department. Following her graduation she taught at Fall River, Elk City, and Belpre before going to Neodesha, where she has taught for the past thirty years. She has done graduate work at the University of Kansas, Kansas State College of Pittsburg, and Colorado College.

Miss Vaughn's professional activities have been varied and notable. She was one of fourteen persons from the high schools and colleges of Kansas who planned the administration of the National Defense Education Act for the schools of the state; she has served on the advisory board of The Science Teacher; she was one of thirty science teachers to participate in a six-weeks' conference in Duluth under the auspices of American Geological Institute at the University of Minnesota; she has presented many papers before state and national organizations and she has contributed articles to professional magazines representing her special interests. Like all master teachers, she is proud of her students' success. One was a Summerfield scholar at the University of Kansas and one was a winner of the Westinghouse Talent Research and three others received honorable mention in the same contest. In 1958 she was instrumental in organizing a science seminar under the sponsorship of the Joe Berg Foundation of Chicago.

She is a member of the National Association of Biology Teachers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Science

Teachers Association, and the Kansas Academy of Science. She is also a member of the Neosho Teachers Association, the Kansas State Teachers Association and the National Teachers Association.

Ethel Yantis

Superintendent

USD 282 Elk County

Mrs. Ethel Yantis, Superintendent of Public Instruction in Elk County, was born on a farm near Howard, the eldest of five children. She was graduated from the Howard High School, where she took a normal training course; and the following year, in 1922, she taught a small rural school for a monthly salary of $70. At the end of the school year, she married her high school sweetheart, and they moved to a farm south and west of Howard, thinking that her teaching days had ended. But a neighboring district persuaded her to teach its school the following term; and except for an eight-year period, from 1935 to 1943, in which her two children were born, she has been in some kind of educational work continuously. Her return to teaching in 1943 was motivated by the wartime shortage of teachers, and for Mrs. Yantis teaching meant additional study. In 1959, at the age of 55 she received an A.B. from Southwestern College after thirteen years of residence and extension work at the Coffeyville Junior College, Friends University, Kansas State Teachers College of Emporia, Pittsburg State College, University of Kansas, and Southwestern.

Mrs. Yantis, like her great grandfather before her who was the first County Superintendent of Elk County, has been an educational pioneer in her home county. After her election to the office of County Superintendent, she established health services for the Elk County schools, a Parent-Teachers

Association in every school, a county-wide testing program, speech therapy for all the schools. and a counseling program. At the same time she has been active in educational work on the state-wide level and has held many offices and has been a member of many committees.